Cautionary Tale

ARTICLES ABOUT CAUTIONARY TALE BY DATE - PAGE 3

— Sometimes I drive 35 miles to this large, chain, 24-hour grocery store to pick up items unavailable in the small town seven miles from my place. Good German beer, a national newspaper, that sort of thing. Most mornings customers are, well, like me, older, retired, stopping in to pick up drugs at an in-store pharmacy, or a daily coffee from a Starbucks barista, perhaps meeting friends, as old folks do when time begins to linger, in the deli. The store is what the writer Ernest Hemingway would call a clean, well-lighted place.

* Czechs see lower budget revenue despite repeated hikes * Economy in recession, eroding benefit of low borrowing costs * Consumers on defensive, some seek lower prices abroad * Cautionary tale for austerity-minded governments By Jan Lopatka PRAGUE, July 27 (Reuters) - There is a Czech saying that goes "if brute force doesn't work, try even more brute force". And it is this path that the country's government has taken to slash its budget deficit, even as evidence shows that it is not working.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But when the right actor finds the path straight into a corrupt soul on fire, a strange kind of joy erupts on screen - a sense of true discovery and excitement. This is what Andy Griffith brought to his film debut in 1957, in "A Face in the Crowd," written by Budd Schulberg and directed by Elia Kazan. (On July 18 Turner Classic Movies honors Griffith, who died this week, with four of his pictures, including "A Face in the Crowd. ") As Lonesome Rhodes, an Arkansas drifter who becomes a radio star, a stealth political adviser and a media-manipulating antihero, Griffith was like an attack dog on a rib-eye.

DETROIT (Reuters) - Convicted crack dealer DeWayne Wilkerson would be in prison until 2015 if not for changes in Michigan's controversial "mandatory minimum" laws. Instead he has made a film. "The Greatest Gift 2.0," which Wilkerson began working on after his 2009 release, premiered last weekend at one of Detroit's largest churches and is booked for several other screenings in coming weeks. It all started in 1996, when Wilkerson was a 26-year-old independent hip hop concert promoter who was moonlighting by peddling crack 30 miles south of Detroit in Monroe, Michigan.

Andrew F., of suburban Atlanta, thought he was being a good Samaritan when he bent down to free a stranger's shoelace that was caught in a wheel of a roller suitcase as the doors started to close on a crowded CTA train. "I literally was trying to help prevent this person connected to my roller bag from being dragged by the train along the platform and die," he explained later, his wallet $1,000 lighter as the result of a ruse. Andrew and his wife, Sheri, were visiting Chicago about a week ago to see friends and maybe score great seats to an Aerosmith concert at the United Center.

Etan Patz. How many people have shivered at the mention of his story? How many times did his photograph, so hearbreakingly cute, once again bring forth the feelings of grief and fear? How long has the name Etan Patz served as shorthand for the deepest of parental terrors - the child who set off walking the two blocks to the school bus and was never seen again? Thirty-three years. On Friday, 33 years after the 6-year-old boy vanished from a New York street, Pedro Hernandez, a 51-year-old man who had worked as a stock boy in a nearby food store, was charged with second-degree murder.

While the Cubs paid tribute to Kerry Wood in a private ceremony Saturday at Wrigley Field, Robert Whitenack was about 1,700 miles away, throwing on the side in the smothering Arizona heat. He had his own little strikeout moment a week ago, fanning seven consecutive A's players, including Manny Ramirez, in an extended spring training game. The crowd at Fitch Park Field No. 3 was 22, according to the website thecubreporter.com, but you shouldn't confuse a lack of attention for a lack of significance.

The Sports Xchange NBA Team Report - Philadelphia 76ers - GETTING INSIDE The 76ers have put themselves in an enviable position. By beating the undermanned Bulls 89-82 Sunday at the Wells Fargo Center, the Sixers put themselves one win from eliminating top-seeded Chicago. Facing a Bulls team without star Derrick Rose and big man Joakim Noah (who is listed as day-to-day with a badly sprained left ankle), the No. 8 Sixers can advance to the second round for the first time since 2003 by prevailing Tuesday night Game 5 in Chicago.

For five days and nights in August 1968, demonstrators fought street battles with Chicago police and National Guard troops, a badly split Democratic Party struggled to pick a presidential nominee and a horrified nation watched it all on the nightly news. In the aftermath of that disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention, the federal commission ordered to investigate the violence filed a report that reads like a cautionary tale as Chicago prepares to host NATO leaders and anti-war protesters in May. "Surely this is not the last time that a violent dissenting group will clash head-on with those whose duty it is to enforce the law," observed the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence.

"I AM ashamed that women are so simple," goes the lyric from a song in Cole Porter's "Kiss Me Kate." (Porter actually lifted that one straight from Shakespeare.) Occasionally, I am ashamed that I am so simple. In the matter of the revival of Gore Vidal's astonishingly prescient play, "The Best Man," I was unable to go to it until recently and what got to me after the fact, was that I had been totally taken in by some of the tepid reviews. Boy! Was I wrong and were these critics wrong, in my humble opinion.